Just
returned Stateside after a spell in enemy territory. Iraq? Non, France.
The timing was chilling. As Bush dropped Smart Bombs on Baghdad, we
brought "Art
Bombs" to Cannes.

Smart
Bombs, as everyone with a TV knows, are those all-American explosives
with the uncanny ability to pulverize their targets between the crosshairs
from umpteen miles away, like an experienced porn star shooting his
money shot right where the director wants it (though a few stray drops
always seem to dribble on things).

"Art
Bombs: American Libertines for Peace"is the name of an erotic art
exhibit of photographs, paintings, drawings and digital artworks by
American artists that counteract and comment on Smart Bombs and the
eroticization of explosive, massively endowed, corporate-sponsored violence.
"Art Bombs" explode with Eros as opposed to Thanatos love
not war; featuring dildos and vibrators instead of cruise missiles and
tomahawks, feminine juices and lube rather than Middle Eastern oil,
consensual BDSM games as distinguished from colonial-style domination;
people in bed with their lovers instead of journalists "embedded"
with the military, the Bonobo
Way as opposed to acting like a bunch of baboons, the truth of sex
instead of the lies of war, sensuous Bush-eating as opposed to vicious,
unilateral Bush-whacking.

"Georgie: War
Is Not The Answer. Pussy Is"
From The
Hungry Republican series by Dr. Susan Block
Also part of the "Art Bombs" exhibit

This
exhibit, now on display at El Teatro Club and Restaurant on 38, Rue
George Clemenceau in Cannes, France, is our modest but earnest effort
to offset the America of smart bombs, dumb diplomacy, Pyrrhic victory,
and ugly, apocalyptic scenes of death and demolition that the Bushies
have presented to the world. Hey, it couldn't do worse than ex-Undersecretary
of State for Public Diplomacy Charlotte Beers' ignominious attempts
to improve America's image beyond its borders.

"Art
Bombs" exploded in our heads in the midst of all the media-boosted
foreplay for "Shock & Awe," built up by defense experts
and pundits as the Greatest War Show on Earth, Opening Night to Bush's
Bukkake
Bombing Crusade, a super-duper international infomercial for American
Weaponry. If you took the right drugs, it was pretty orgasmic to watch
from a safe TV screen, especially as it was accompanied by a soundtrack
of gasps and moans from the fatuous newscasters, embedded and otherwise.

All
that explosive precision on top of the considerable advance warning
(1000 times more advance promotional build-up than the Oscars or any
mini-series) meant few Baghdad civilians were reported killed that first
frazzling Friday night. It also meant that no one was shocked or awed,
just really rattled and enraged. What immediately followed was rather
strange, at least to most TV-watchers. Instead of the instant, smiley-faced,
flower-tossing welcome that we were told to expect, surrenders turned
into booby traps, and soon we were the ones being shocked and awed--that
the Hajis were fighting back. Of course, they were no match for our
ridiculously superior weaponry (let's run that Bukkake Bombing infomercial
again, Wolf). And so smart bombs make way for dumb slaughtering, maiming,
starving and displacement of Iraqi civilians and conscripts, grisly
deaths of Anglo-American troops, and even a few rather suspicious killings
of unembedded journalists.

The
night before the Pre-Come Bombs (you know, that dribble that came before
Shock & Awe, in our attempt to "decapitate" Saddam &
sons), my art curator, Kim Mendoza, and I packed up the trunk with our
"Art Bombs" which, though fingered thoroughly at LAX, made
it safely to the lovely little village of Cannes
where they are now exploding upon the walls of El Teatro.

Which
bombs are smartest? We'll leave that to the French to decide. That's
why, at a time when France-bashing is a fashionable fetish in the more
pugnacious parts of America, we brought our "Art Bombs" to
France. Though they never claim to have invented the french fry (the
Belgians did that), the French are America's philosophical godparents,
having given us the Statue of Liberty, the French kiss, the French tickler,
and generally helped us make our way in the world ever since the American
Revolutionary War which we may not have won without them. They are trying
to help us even now as we ride our snorting Warhorse from Umm Kasr to
Baghdad to Tikrit to Syria and beyond...

Yes,
in part, the French, like the Russians and the Germans, have had economic
reasons behind their pacifist positions. And what's wrong with having
a few economic reasons reasons to prevent a massive war crime? The emergency
$75 billion that Bush's chickenhawks are now coercing American taxpayers
into feeding the hungry Warhorse could feed Iraq's children for a decade.
It could also feed America's now burgeoning poorer class (thanks to
another domestically flaccid Bush economy) and give the American veterans
that fight our crazy wars some decent healthcare. The rewards that accrue
for "winning" this war will only benefit certain US corporations
in the oil and construction industries, as well as the military which
will continue to inhabit the ever-expanding conquered territory indefinitely.
Most Americans will get nothing but the hollow, jingoistic satisfaction
of "winning" and the responsibility of financing George and
Rummy's Great Adventure.

The
night of "Shock & Awe," Max and I stopped in Rim's, a
little all-night market, and there was Mohmed the clerk watching the
bombs fall on fellow Arabs, anguish lining his young face. We flashed
our peace signs, trying rather pathetically to "apologize."
Then we went to Oasis,
one of our favorite Libertine
Clubs of Cannes, to try to forget about the war, and stopped back
in a couple hours later. Again, we heard the sounds of bombs coming
from the TV, but this time Mohmed was smiling. Was he changing his mind
and now seeing the American invaders as liberators? Not quite. He'd
changed the channel and was now tuned to an old movie on Vietnam, his
fury placated by watching Americans on the receiving end of wartime
brutality. We laughed stupidly and shivered nervously as we paid for
our Evian.

"Art
Bombs" is also a kind of therapy, I admit. Yup, erotic art therapy
for the vicariously bombed sex therapist. Why not? When the bombs began
to fall, I couldn't watch TV or even read the news on the Internet without
crying. From the loutish war-stoking of CNN, etc. to the scenes of suffering
eloquently described by Robert Fisk and other un-embedded journalists,
all of it makes the tears just stream like Spring rain. I cry for the
Iraqis losing their lives, their limbs, their loved ones, tender bodies
pitted with fragments from this "new kind of war." I cry for
our troops, so young and strong and sexy, being shot at and killed and
forced to kill civilians, blood that will never leave their hands or
their mind. I cry for the families of the soldiers, helplessly and "patriotically"
steeling themselves for news of their loved ones' death or injury, or
perhaps they will come home in one piece physically, but mentally broken
or hardened into gunmetal. I even cry for the TV news hacks, the press
whores embedded with their soldier-daddies, so excited about the romance
of reporting a war, trying so hard to play their part in the game, their
tongues tied with the intricacies of invasion, their eyes stinging with
sand and the sights of slaughter they dare not describe (for security
reasons), their souls scorched by the carnage. I even cry for the blown-up
buildings, and for the archeology of this ancient land of Mesopotamia,
Ur, the birthplace of Sarah and Abraham , Biblical mother and father
of the three "great" monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity
and Islam (remember the outrage we felt when the Taliban blew up the
Bamian Buddhas months before 9/11? What we have done to Iraq is the
same crime against archeology). And I cry for myself, now branded an
Ugly American throughout the world I have always loved to travel.

But
all that crying just chaps my cheeks. "Art Bombs" therapy
is, at least, a bit more productive. What else can an American libertine
for peace do? Feeling helpless and frustrated when the bombs began to
fall, despite the protests of the largest peace movement in history,
I'd briefly
considered becoming a human shield, but rejected that as my concern
for the sanctity of life begins with my own. And though I gamely tried
praying for peace (whatever that means in the new era of Permanent War),
I just couldn't bring myself to "pray for the President" with
the Presidential
Prayer Team, organizers of the "Golf
and Prayer Walk" here in the U.S. and the In Touch ministry
that asks everyone, even our troops on the battlefield, to "pray
for President Bush."

But
perhaps, as part of the evolving American Peace Movement, our little
"Art Bombs" exhibit could help the French-- and the rest of
the world--see that not all Americans are behind this nightmare of might
obliterating life.. Perhaps it would show that some Americans wish to
"support our troops" by not supporting an illegal, unconscionable,
expensive invasion, despite the Raving
Castrati who try to silence all criticism, pumping up their so-called
Patriot
Act, effectively taking away the very freedoms that we're supposedly
fighting for, calling protestors "treasonous anti-American Hitler-lovers"
and the like, just because we don't relish pulverizing the sandy poop
out of a barely armed and hardly dangerous, sanction-decimated, sovereign
nation.

Dr.Susan
Block's "soul-searching... essays (on the War)... are among the most
readable to come out of Los Angeles (that) smartly combine outrage and
eccentric observations with levelheaded warnings about the loss of civil
liberties."
Steve Mikulan
The LA Weekly

Most
of Dr. Block's essays are reprinted in Counterpunch,
"America's Best Political Newsletter," edited by Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair

"So
thrilled to have you on our site, lending distinction and intelligence."
Alex Cockburn
Counterpunch

"Alex
and I love your stuff... So do most of our readers. The ones who don't?...well,
fuck em. " Jeff St. Clair
Counterpunch

"The
people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy.
All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the
peace-
makers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works
the same in any country."
Herman Goeringat the Nuremberg Trial